


What If I Wasn't Joking?

by CookieDoughMe



Category: Haven (TV)
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-06-26 12:18:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,053
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19768057
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CookieDoughMe/pseuds/CookieDoughMe
Summary: Duke and Nathan as high school friends. Until suddenly friends is not enough.I just started watching Shoot The Messenger. In episode two there is a line, "What if I wasn't joking?". It stuck in my head and this is the result.





	What If I Wasn't Joking?

Prom was still months away, but the warm weather had come early and Duke and Nathan were taking advantage of it by lying out on the grass up on the hill, the view of the open sea in front of them. Soon, important decisions would need to be made that would affect the course of their whole adult lives, but for now they could enjoy the sunny Saturday afternoon and content themselves with questions of high school, such as who to take to prom.

This was a question Nathan was finding complicated. It's not like he hadn't spent time with girls before; he'd had plenty of female friends. But the question of girls - of treating girls as _girls_ , as girlfriends - was different. There seemed to be a whole new set of rules that he hadn't figured out yet and no one really wanted to explain.

"There's plenty of girls would go with you," Duke said easily, stretching his legs out in front of him.

"What?" replied Nathan, surprised at the suggestion. Duke nodded and Nathan thought about this concept for a moment. He couldn't see it. "No," he replied with a quick shake of the head.

"Hannah Driscoll likes you," Duke told him confidently.

"We're friends," Nathan corrected him.

"Yes at the moment you are," acknowledged Duke. He had been picking at the grass but now he let the stalks fall from his fingers to fold his hands underneath his head, turning his face up to the sun and closing his eyes against the glare. "But she _likes_ you. I bet she'd go to prom with you if you asked her."

Nathan doubted this, but he filed the information away for later consideration. In one sense he wasn't all that bothered about prom, but everyone was making such a big deal about it. And one of the key things everyone was making a big deal about was how bad it would be to go without a date. It might be nice to go with Hannah even if they just went as friends.

"Well what about you?" Nathan challenged after a moment. "Loads of girls like _you_. Heard Jane and Kate talking about you last week."

Duke did not seem surprised to hear this, but his response was a sigh. "Did you also hear the part where their parents have forbidden them on pain of death to so much as speak to a Crocker?"

Nathan turned to face Duke and raised an eyebrow at him. "Death?"

Duke turned to look at him. "Not literally," he confirmed, then rested his head back on his arms. "But might as well be. It seems to be a common situation. There might be girls who _want_ to go with me, but none of them actually _will_."

Nathan considered this but could see no obvious solution. They lay there in silence for a moment, Nathan running his fingers through the stalks of grass at his side. "What will you do?" he asked.

Duke turned to him again, rolling over onto his side to face Nathan properly. "Figure I'll go on my own. Make friends when I get there." He said it with a grin and the way his eyebrows flicked up a little at the end of the sentence left Nathan in no doubt as to what he intended when he said "make _friends_."

This was an approach Nathan hadn't considered and he was impressed, though it struck him as risky. Suddenly the whole thing seemed so terribly complicated, and the thought of being there at all seemed nothing but oppressive. Right now he didn't want to ever move from where they were - lying out on the cool green grass, the sound of the breeze in the trees near by, the sun shining down on them from a clear blue sky, the swell of the ocean almost in reach, his friend by his side. Things were simple when it was just the two of them. Just at that moment Nathan really couldn't see the need to add any complications.

"You ever think it would be easier if we could forget about the girls and just date each other?" Nathan said to the sky.

There was a moment of charged silence. Suddenly afraid he might be about to ruin the friendship, Nathan turned on his side to face Duke and offered him a quick smile to break the tension.

"Ha!" said Duke suddenly. "Yeah good one."

"Yeah I was totally joking," muttered Nathan as they both rolled back onto their backs and considered a cloud making its way across the sky. There was another one ahead of it, evidently at a different altitude with a slower wind speed for the first one was in the process of catching up. If the winds didn't change they would be in the same spot soon; from the ground it would look like one cloud.

Nathan thought about that moment they had almost had, and he thought about how wrong it could go. But still, he couldn't let it go, he realised. "What if I wasn't joking?" he said, and slowly rolled on his side to face Duke again.

Duke didn't reply, but he rolled over to face Nathan too. They had been lying next to each other on their backs and so now there was hardly any distance between them at all. For a moment they just looked at each other. Nathan wasn't sure he was generally too good at reading people, but he knew Duke and he knew that if he hadn't liked the idea of Nathan's "joke" then he wouldn't be lying here like this, close enough they could feel each other's warmth, and staring into his eyes.

Hesitantly, Nathan reached out and brushed a strand of hair from Duke's cheek, tucking it behind his ear. Duke's gaze didn't shift, and so Nathan leaned forward, his eyes flicking down towards Duke's lips. The next thing he knew they were kissing, slowly at first and then gradually deeper and deeper. He pushed his fingers into Duke's hair and felt Duke's hand on the small of his back, pulling them close together.

They lay there kissing in the sun for a long, long time.

Eventually, they pulled apart and grinned at each other. Maybe prom wouldn't be so bad after all, Nathan thought.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! If you're glad you did then any kind of positive comment is always very welcome :)


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